On the last Tuesday Teasers, I encouraged folks to participate in Blog For Choice 2012, the theme of which is “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” Commenter Jenn_smithson wrote in response:
The chosen theme this year has irritated me because in response I ask WHAT prochoice candidates?!! I don’t believe there are ANY for national office. You basically have whack-a-do extremist “prolife” candidates on the right and spineless wish-washy candidates on the left, Seriously, our rights are going to continue being slammed unless someone takes a legitimate, strong stand and who isn’t ashamed to do so. I get so sick and tired of allegedly progressive democrats looking at the ground, pulling at their collars, and/or only able to articulate support of those rights in the case their daughter(s) have an “accident” because they don’t want to help raise any spring break bastard babies.
I think Jenn has just given me the kernel of my own response to this year’s question, which will be putting forward what a true pro-choice candidate would look like.
So help me Harpies: If you could construct an ideal pro-choice politician, what would the talking points be? What rights would they support and how would they articulate their support for those rights? What sort of vision of women, girls, families, and reproductive justice would they put forth? Brainstorm away, and I’ll do my best to distill the conversation into a final post for January 22nd.
Drahill, interpret it any way you want, but historically, the term “choice” was used by women’s advocacy groups to avoid the loaded word “abortion.” If you want to expand it to mean other things, that’s your own personal interpretation. Check the websites of pro-choice groups and you’ll see that although safety net questions are sometimes discussed, the focus of their work is on keeping abortion legal and accessible. That’s hard enough these days without bringing anything else into the equation.
I personally do not believe that people in difficult financial straits should choose to have kids. That’s my own personal belief, because I know that kids are a very expensive proposition, in ways you can’t even imagine when you have one. Would you advice your clients to buy SUVs or homes they couldn’t pay for? But you can sell a house or a car. What do you do with a kid you can’t feed or clothe? Saying we need to change social policy is completely true-and won’t feed one hungry kid today. Sure, stuff happens to people even with the best planning, and that’s why I would never suggest a public policy that would punish kids or their parents for the kid’s existence. If you think I go around biting the heads off people at the public assistance office, you just go on and think that, but you are quite wrong.
And you know what? I think that every time I help a woman get into the clinic and get an abortion she wants so she can provide for the kids she tells me she already has, I’m helping a family. Don’t you?
@Drahill – Let me elaborate on an earlier point, namely the following: “Even the choice to direct no policies towards childbearing in particular is a policy choice that will affect childbearing behavior.”
There is no way for a government to make a set of laws that are neutral in terms of influencing childbearing behavior in a society where adults act as economic units. The question of whether or not a government should try for this is moot: it is impossible. This is because of government’s function as a distributor of resources. This is really basic social economics. In all modern economic systems, adults are allocated resources based on the productive labor they provide. For example, in capitalist systems, this happens through monetary exchange, whereas in communist systems the labor is provided directly to the state and resources are apportioned thereby as well. In modern developed nations, children consume resources but perform no productive labor (obviously if child labor is considered this operates somewhat differently); in the absence of any other intervention, their resources are provided by their parents or other immediate relatives/caretakers. Therefore, the government has essentially two choices: to do no reallocation of resources to compensate for the additional costs of children faced by parents; or to implement some system whereby the resources of those with no dependent children are partially reallocated to those with dependent children. (Theoretically there is some middle ground in which resources are reallocated only among parents with dependent children — I don’t think anyone has tried this, but regardless, I suspect it would trend towards the former case.) Refraining from reallocating resources — regardless of intent! — *functions* to penalize childbearing. Reallocating resources *functions* to penalize childlessness.
Several caveats:
1) This sort of analysis is purely economic. It does not take into account qualitative benefits to the overall wellbeing of society and that sort of thing. Moreover, it considers only fairly direct economic consequences.
2) Its limitations notwithstanding, I did not just make this up out of nowhere. In fact, I did not myself make it up at all. This is a classical analysis. This kind of analysis is fundamental to modern economics.
3) Perhaps you could argue that this would not occur in a pure and well-functioning socialist system in which all resource exchanges are governed by the community at large but, again, that’s a moot point because none has ever existed with more than ~150 people, likely due to neurological limitations in humans (a long story but a lot of research has been done on this as well).
4) I am not pretending that humans are purely economic agents. Clearly that is not the case. However, it would be folly to ignore that this kind of consideration does play into the calculus of complex decisions like that of whether or not to have children. We can observe how this happens. Many people have. I provided some scholarly work earlier that discusses this.
It is the case that any decision, including a lack of action, that a government takes regarding resource allocation to children (or parents with dependent children in particular) will end up influencing childbearing behavior somewhat. Perhaps you would argue that it is only the intention to do so that is improper. I think this is unfair, because it basically punishes well-thought-out policy-making. I hope that you would agree that the possible implications of policies should be thoroughly considered in that case before they are implemented.
MM: My problem with the whole argument you’ve made is that you’ve never said what “dire financial straits” actually means. What I pointed out is that by and large, people in the US are not poor by their own doing. We live in a system that basically benefits from keeping people down and keeping people poor. So when you talk about how those who can’t afford kids shouldn’t have them, you ARE (and there is no getting around this) saying that a very sizable segment of the US population should not reproduce (and that segment is largely made up of women, people of color and those with disabilities). And I’m having a hard time believing that you cannot see this abelist, classist and racist implications of that stance. There is the second problem of defining exactly what it would mean to be financial unready to have a child. Does it mean that a couple who would need food stamps to feed their child shouldn’t have the child? To me, it reeks of penalizing individuals for what is, at the end of the day, a systematic and societal failure. That’s how, in my mind, I justify entitlements – if society by and large causes the root of the poverty, society by and large has the duty to correct or remedy it.
That what where I think Jenn and myself really started to question you. Because it’s all well and good to say, people shouldn’t have kids till they can take care of them. But I am inherently wary of any argument that has been a Republican talking point for the last few years. And I do not get how what your saying, well-intentioned as it may be, could ever be worked into law. And honestly, and this is my last point, why must personal responsibility always be financial in nature? My parents taught me that I should wait to have kids until I was emotionally and mentally ready for them – not because I wouldn’t be able to provide, but because it was what was best for me.
As to the pro-choice thing: Pro-Choice, now, is a political slogan. That does not mean that’s what pro-choice SHOULD mean. It sounds better and softer than “pro-abortion rights.” Let’s face it. Just as pro-life sounds nicer than “anti-abortion rights.” But that’s what they are, and I don’t see how you can argue otherwise. I’d really suggest you take up reading some blogs (seriously, Womanist Musings) that address pro-choice as reproductive justice. Because that is all about helping women in whatever choice they make. In reproductive justice, if a woman who wants to parent has an abortion because she fears not being able to find a place to live, the movement is regarded as having failed her. Because the movement did not fight for her choice and what she needed to exercise it. That’s why just defining pro-choice as abortion rights is easier – because once you look at reproductive justice and what it means, it’s so HUGE it can feel hopeless. But I think we still have an obligation to those women who want to parent. It’s thinking about all the women you DON’T see at the clinic and their families.